This is an important first step towards French aid transparency, improving the control and understanding of aid and benefiting both partner countries and their civil society as well as French citizens, parliamentarians and NGOs.

David Hall-Matthews, Director of Publish What You Fund, said:

“This is a big move – and in the right direction. It shows what can be accomplished through a strong political commitment to transparency and the use of open data. By publishing aid data in a common standard format, we can begin to follow the flows of development assistance through the supply chain and on to the ground. We look forward to France continuing to publish more of its development spending to IATI, so this good practice can be replicated with all the other countries where it spends aid.”

Christian Reboul, Advocacy Manager at Oxfam France, said:

“There’s still a long way to go to reach a real transparency and traceability of all French official development assistance, a commitment made by the President of the Republic at the G8 last year. The government must continue its efforts to ensure that this international commitment is respected by following the example of this site for Mali.”

Friederike Röder, Director of ONE France, said:

“This approach on transparency should also be adopted in the future Programming and Orientation Law (LOP) on development cooperation, currently being debated in Parliament. The law should incorporate transparency goals for all aid, not only for France’s priority countries.”

The three organisations are also asking France to encourage all its donor partners in Mali, such as the World Bank or the European Commission, to create a similar site listing all the funding and international aid projects for Mali, using data in accordance with IATI and the common standard. Taking forward this initiative at the country level would be a first and a victory for aid transparency in Mali.